Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those.

that you share it with.

God bless you.

Amen.

Praise God.

Uh two announcements.

Two announcements for you

Um December 6th.

What is December 6th?

Anybody?

Man, look at y'all.

Serve conference.

December 6th.

If you have not registered, register.

It's a free event.

And this is this is our way to equip the church.

This is not a leader's conference.

This is this is a church conference.

This is for everybody.

Who uh desires to serve in some part in the kingdom of God.

This is about how we can equip the body, the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the community, and for the church.

And so we want you there.

We have

Amazing speakers.

We got some breakout sessions.

We got free breakfast, free lunch, praise the Lord for all those things.

So December 6th, don't miss it.

And then on a more boring note, but a very necessary note, we have our our members meeting on on uh

We want to be here.

And so we'll we'll go over um our you know our financials and and uh you know some some some things that that we have planned for

For the future.

So this is this is for you.

Amen.

Last year we had this.

We had the first one.

We had a members' meeting and only a fraction of the church showed up.

And everybody comes tonight of worship, man.

Everybody comes tonight of worship, which is great.

But

Come to this stuff too because you have a part to play in it.

Amen?

Amen.

And finally, I just want to say thank you for Pastor's Day.

Thank you for just showing up.

Thank you for being here at 11:30 and not 11 o'clock last last week

We had an amazing time.

Um Brother Luis Ventura he he brought a word uh for the church and we were blessed by it.

I was blessed by it just to have church.

That's all I wanted to do was just to have church and we have some church.

Amen

So I want to keep having church.

Amen.

I want to have some church today.

Is that cool with you?

All right.

All right.

Tell your face, okay?

All right, Genesis.

Go with me to Genesis 22.

Genesis 22.

Amen.

Genesis 22.

We're going to read 9 through 14, and when you have it, you can give me an Amen.

Amen.

And it says this.

It says, when they came to the place of which God had told him.

Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.

And he said, Here I am.

He said, Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything for him or to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son.

From me.

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.

And Abraham went and took the ram

And offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

So Abraham called the name of that place the Lord will provide.

Someone say that with me.

The Lord will provide

As it is to this day on that mount, the Lord, it shall be provided.

Heavenly Father, I pray over this word, my God.

Lord, I pray that as I have received it from you, Lord, that your people would receive it, my God, today.

I pray that this is a word that is consumed, not just heard, my God.

But I pray that you would deposit this into our spirits, into our hearts, my God, that we would go out, my God, committed to it, my Lord.

I pray, Holy Spirit, that nothing that I say today would be of me, my God, but all of you, Father, in Jesus' mighty name.

Amen.

Amen.

You can be seated.

Amen.

This word has been on my heart for several weeks.

And I I'll be honest with you, the Lord has been testing me on this.

There's never a word that gets preached from this pulpit that hasn't been preached.

To us first.

And so as I as I've received it, I just pray that you receive it as well.

I've entitled it Build Your Altar.

Build your altar.

And I want to make this super practical today so that we can apply this word of God to our lives.

I want to

I want to take each one of those words, build your altar as kind of a structure to this word.

First, I want to give you some context for those of you who don't know this story well.

Abraham and Sarah have been

Chosen by God in their extremely old age to bear children who would be the foundation of God's people, Israel.

Abraham's role in all of this was simply

Faith and obedience.

Faith and obedience.

So the two words that I want you to hold on to this morning.

Faith and obedience.

God spoke, Abraham believed, and he went

Now, his journey wasn't perfect.

How many of you know that the journey is never perfect?

Amen.

Doesn't matter what the word is, it's never going to be delivered perfectly, or it'll be delivered perfectly, but it won't be carried out perfectly because we're imperfect humans.

And so that's true with Abraham and Sarah.

They were incredibly flawed human beings.

They uh there were times where they dropped the ball, they lied about their spousal relationship out of fear.

There were times where they doubted

The word that God gave them.

There were times where they laughed at the word that God gave them.

There were times where they tried to orchestrate God's word.

to come to pass to fit their timeline and their convenience.

They were totally imperfect people, yet God used them and commended their hearts and their faith.

And finally, after all of this, Abraham is 100 years old.

His wife is 90 years old.

They conceive and they bear a child.

Isaac.

And it's Isaac who was called to carry out this promise that was given to his father Abraham to bring about this nation of people who would be called God's chosen people.

There's nothing like seeing the promises of God unfold, right?

I mean if you've actually seen it, you know how beautiful it is

When you when you watch it happen, you can't just you can't help but just to sit back and be in awe of what God is doing and think about all of the things that He has had to work out, all of the good and all the bad

For good, amidst all the pain and all the struggle and all the confusion and all the weak moments when God's promise is finally delivered

You know, sometimes it feels like a chapter in your life has closed, right?

And you can live happily ever after.

But oftentimes that's when God wants to elevate you even further.

When you're seeing the promise unfold, that's when God's gonna do something crazy, man.

It's almost as if God is going to test you to see if you can handle more.

So initially there's there's the test, right?

God gives you the word and you gotta you gotta hold on to it.

How many of you are are in that

That season right now where you're holding on to a word.

You're in the faith season.

You're in the waiting season.

You're in the patience season.

You are being faithful to God as He's being faithful to you in this moment of waiting.

And then God delivers a promise.

But then he'll ask you for something more.

And this is where obedience comes into play.

The Christian walk is not just about faith, it's also about

And so this is where Abraham is in his journey.

One day God calls to him.

Abraham, he says, Hey, uh, you know that that son that I promised you

And and I I promise to give you this son in an impossible season of your life.

I want you to give him back to me

Verse 2 says God uh God says, Take your son, your only son, whom he love, and offer him there as a burnt offering on the mountain of which I shall tell you.

This isn't, hey, I want you to ship your son off to boarding school for a little bit.

This isn't like you know when Hannah Hannah prayed to God for her son for years and then God finally gave her

Samuel, and then she says, You know what?

I'm gonna give him back to you, Lord.

I'm gonna present him to be in the service of the high priest in the temple.

For for the rest of his life.

This isn't even that.

This is I want you to lay your son on an altar and offer him there as a burnt offering.

Somebody say burnt.

I won't lie to you, if I got that word like Abraham did, I would have been analyzing it and looking for the loophole.

How many of you have gotten a word from God and you as soon as you got you start to look for the loophole?

The easy way out.

My anxiety would have been through the roof, man.

On that way up to the mountain, I'd be thinking, okay, maybe, maybe

Maybe offer him as a sacrifice means I'm gonna go up there and pray for him and dedicate him to the Lord.

Maybe that's what it means.

Like when we do baby dedications up here and we

We we put oil on their heads, we anoint them, and all of the church extends their hands and we say a prayer of blessing over their life.

Maybe that's what it is.

I would be asking myself, how can I give the least of the thing God has given me or asked me to give?

How can I give the least of what God has asked me to give?

Are you paying attention this morning?

Because I believe that we do this far too often.

We give God the least of what He's asked us to give.

God says, Give me your marriage.

Okay, Lord, I give you my marriage.

There it's yours.

We we incorporate the Bible into our wedding ceremonies as gifts.

I get this all the time.

Pastor, can you can you make sure to say a few verses and and a few prayers and talk about God because Pastor, we we intend to

To put God into our marriage.

That's not giving God your marriage.

That's committing to give God your marriage.

Giving God your marriage happens when you're already married and you don't know if you want to be married anymore.

That's when you give God your marriage.

Giving God your marriage happens

In a moment of pride, when you don't want to apologize, when you don't want to die to yourself, even though you committed to doing it, that's when you give God your marriage.

Little Bible gift.

I ain't gonna do nothing.

Los aras el lazo please man

Talk to me when you're two years into marriage and you want to give up.

Talk to me when it costs you something to die to yourself because I'll tell you, man, wedding day is the best day.

Wedding night.

Come on man.

It's so easy.

It's so easy to to to say these things.

We say God says give me your heart.

We say okay God I'll give my heart.

Done.

We sit we sing that song uh Lord I give you my heart we we close out the service with it I give you my soul Alright Heart is yours Lord

You know you can never fully give God your heart in any given moment because you're not carrying everything that's going to be on your heart.

You give your heart to God today.

Well, what about tomorrow when something comes onto your heart?

You gotta do it then too, right?

We we often give God the least of what He's asked us to give.

We shortchange the Lord.

Sometimes we even over-spiritualize things to God.

We we over-spiritualize things when God is trying to get us to do it practically.

See, Abraham could have said, okay, every day, Lord, I'm gonna give him to you.

I'm gonna give him to you.

Every day I'm gonna instruct him in the ways of the Lord.

I'm gonna pray with him.

I'm gonna anoint his head with oil.

Every single night I'm gonna talk about why we love the Lord.

But God says, hey, that's cute, but for real.

Give him to me.

Give them to me.

I want you to ask yourself today, what is it that God has asked of you that you have failed to make practical?

Meaning it hasn't moved beyond the prayer.

Sometimes you gotta move beyond the prayer, bro.

Sometimes you gotta, I mean fasting is cool, but sometimes you gotta make it practical.

Sometimes you gotta stop rebuking things and you actually gotta let it go.

Okay?

What have you actually not laid down to be burned?

That's when it gets real.

What are you carrying today that needs to be burned and consumed before the Lord

Two uh three things I want to give you real quick real quick on building your altar point number one in building your altar is building it turn to your neighbor tell them build it

Build it.

Okay, look, look, look, this is why I think this is one of the most important ones.

Because we know how to come to altars.

I don't think we know how to build them very well.

We know how to be moved to altars in a moment where the sermon is moving that was preceded by 40 minutes of firefield Pentecostal worship.

We know how to come to altars when everybody is in one mind and one spirit and God is doing something and everybody's inspired by the Spirit.

We know how to come to altars, but when we're on the top of the mountain alone

And we're lonely and there's nobody to talk to, and it's dark, and there's no food, and we're deep in our emotions, and we're afraid, and we're depressed, and we're enraged, and there's no Holy Spirit communicating in a way that is inspiring us.

We don't know how to build altars.

To be given to God.

And if we can't build altars, how can we be living sacrificially in a way that is holy and pleasing to God?

Paul tells us offer our bodies as living sacrifices.

That means every single day.

Because you know what?

Every single day, I don't know about you, but I wake up in this body.

This 36-year-old body, I wake up in it, and sometimes my back hurts.

And I gotta kill my flesh every single day.

Not just when I get up.

I wish I wish if it was like you know just taking a shower just a couple times a day you do it in the morning, maybe you do it at night.

But in reality, the moment you step outside, you probably need another shower.

You start to stink.

Some some of you.

The moment you start to sweat, you could probably use a shower.

This is the way we need to kill the flesh.

Every time there is even an ounce of something that has the potential to contaminate your spirit, you gotta kill it and you gotta give it to God.

Can I be honest with you?

Coming to altars doesn't really cost you that much.

I mean, some you know, sometimes we got to get over our pride and our fear, and it's a step of faith.

I get that, I'm not discounting that.

But really, you you come up for five, ten minutes, you go back to your seat

It doesn't really cost that much to come to altars.

We need to learn how to labor in the construction of these sacred places.

We know we need to learn how to create sacred moments.

Whether that be, you know, um in the car or in the office or at work or at school, where it's just me, God, and a sacrifice when there's not an altar to run to or a pastor to go to or a friend to confide in.

We need to learn how to make altars.

Coming is easy.

Building it takes work.

Building it takes practical work.

The Bible says that Abraham got up early in the morning.

Early in the morning.

God gave him this word.

I want you to, he said, I want you to do this thing.

And the very next day, early in the morning, Abraham gets up to prepare.

The altar.

That's the first thing he did, he made it a priority.

That already disqualifies half of us.

We can't even get up early.

But Abraham didn't he didn't drag it out.

He didn't say I need some me time.

He didn't say let me let me process it, right?

Because when God is asking for the thing that needs to be sacrificed, we have a responsibility to give it up quickly.

How many times how how many of you know that when you procrastinate, how many procrastinators we got in here?

Amen.

All right.

When you procrastinate, y you're already not doing the work with excellence.

Right?

I mean, forget about doing the work with excellence.

If you procrastinate to do the work, you're already not doing it with excellence.

You're not doing it with your full heart.

And when we're talking about an altar, an altar is literally the place where you lay down your heart.

And so, whenever life happens, or you're tempted, or you're tested, you're attacked, and you tell God, Lord, I'm not ready to give this to you.

I want you to understand the danger that comes from holding on to something that God has asked you to give up.

Now, we're not always going to be able to give it up right away.

I get it.

We all fall short of the glory of God, but I want you to at least acknowledge the consequences that can come from dragging out a sacrifice.

Holding on to something for too long, it creates a stubborn heart.

It can invite unhealthy spirits.

It can drift you from your God-given purpose.

I share with you many times that pride used to torment me, man.

I used to struggle with it.

I struggled with this polished identity that I felt like I needed to present to the world

That didn't allow me to be real and transparent with the people that I was ministering to because I was too afraid to be seen as less than.

I thought, okay, I'm the minister.

I gotta be seen as more holy.

And so I would I would I would guard myself way too much.

Today I think I'm too transparent.

My my wife says you need to shut up sometimes

Share too much.

But it but but it's only because I'm constantly fighting this

I can't afford to go back to the way that I used to be.

I can't do that.

I'm on this thing for growth.

Not regression.

But for years of my ministry, this is what I dealt with.

And I thank God for his grace and his patience because I know that if I would have held on to it, it would have destroyed me.

But let me tell you this, I struggle to give it up at first.

Every every time uh a feeling

or an emotion of pride or ego or jealousy or comparison or anger, anytime it would arise in me, you know what I would do?

I would feed it.

I would fan the flame to keep it alive.

And I look back at it now and I'm like, Ryan, you were at your worst self back then.

And I know that some people in the room are dealing with things that you wish you could let go of, but you keep feeding it.

You keep feeding the lust.

You gotta cut off access.

You you I mean you let you let the enemy come through the smallest hole.

That's all he needs.

You gotta you gotta eliminate it.

Stop feeding the anger agree with and it just rouse you up.

Stop going on Facebook.

Stop talking to the people who only tell you what you want to hear.

The people who make it seem like you're the one who's right all the time.

That's only enraging you even more.

Stop feeding the thing that you're trying to let go of.

You're fanning the flame to the wrong thing.

And and and the thing is when these things arise in you

Your spirit knows that it needs to be given to God.

You know it because you're a child of God.

But the flesh isn't willing to do the work of building the altar.

Over time, man, I I kept wrestling with this.

I got to a point where I got so sick and tired of feeding it.

I said, I'm I'm done feeding it.

Because you know when you feed something, it only grows bigger, right?

And so I was like, okay, I'm I'm gonna stop feeding it, I'm gonna stop dwelling on it, but I still didn't kill it right away.

I procrastinated.

I procrastinate.

I should have done what Abraham did.

I should have got up early in the morning and gathered up all the firewood and taken my sacrifice with me to the Lord.

But I held on to it.

How many of you are holding on to something, thinking and hoping that it's just gonna go away on its own?

It ain't.

It's not.

The enemy wants to be there.

He he's not gonna get bored.

You gotta kill it.

You gotta kill the things that you're dealing with.

It wasn't until one day I decided, okay, for real, for real.

I'm done with this.

I started playing guacamole with my issues.

Man.

Every time pride would come up, I would kill it.

I wouldn't give it two seconds.

Every time anger would come up, I would kill it.

Right then and there.

I wouldn't wait till Sunday to leave it at the altar

I'd have to build my altar in the moment, whether that was in the car or in my office or at home, wherever it was, I would have to build it.

The reason we have so much reverence and humility when it comes to the church is because we know that this is the place of worship.

See you no?

This is the place of worship.

I say this all the time.

I say this all the time.

The temple, our temple is like is like a church.

We've got many rooms.

Many rooms.

And we've got reverence for the sanctuary.

We we we don't talk the way that we talk out there.

There's like two different people.

There's a different version of you in the parking lot than you in the sanctuary.

I've heard the stories man.

I've heard the stories.

I've heard them.

They talk to me, man.

People talk to me.

Stop getting in fights over there, man.

I know it's chaotic, but we're gonna get there

We need to learn how to create a sacred moment wherever we are.

A sacred uh a sacred temple when we're not here at the temple to live holy and pleasing to God.

Build it.

Tell the person again, build it.

How many of you leave Sundays, man, feeling so energized, man, so ready, your cups are so full.

And then Monday comes, something happens, you're like, oh.

What do you say?

I can't wait till Sunday.

Bro, come on.

Create a Sunday.

Create a moment of praise.

Create a moment of worship, man.

Create an atmosphere of sacrifice.

Build your altar.

Point number two is your altar.

Your.

I acknowledge that this is a weird bullet point.

Your.

It's not a verb or a noun.

But the point that I want to draw you today is that you have something to lay.

God is asking you for something.

I got your attention because I'm talking to you this time.

I'm talking to you.

You have something to lay.

Stop worrying about what other people have to lay.

You can't build their altars.

You can't build their altars.

You can only build your altar.

You can't bring their stuff to their altar.

No, they got to do that.

You have something to lay.

My wife and I do a lot of pastoral counseling, and you know what I like?

I like talking to couples because we we get to do it together, and she's a way better counselor than I am

And I I really I I enjoy talking to couples.

Um when it comes to marriage counseling, you know, both both the the man and the wife need to be in counseling.

Can I just talk to marriages for a second?

We do we do a lot of marriage counseling inside and outside of the church.

And and first I want to say this.

If if you're ever going through some marriage issues or you ever or if you're going through marital problems right now

Never tell your spouse, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen.

Never tell your spouse you need to go to counseling.

Some of y'all are looking at each other, I just told you that yesterday.

Don't don't uh-uh.

Okay, if they have issues, personal issues, they can go to counseling.

But if it affects the marriage.

Y'all are one flesh.

Stop trying to detach.

Stop trying to get them to solve their problems.

No, no, you have problems too.

Even if they are 100% responsible for the issues in the marriage, stop clapping.

Hold on, hold on.

Stop clapping.

Stop clapping.

Even if they are 100% responsible for the marriage problems, it's still affecting you.

Go with them.

Stop sending them off like they're a child.

You ain't gonna fix what you don't bring together.

People come to me for marriage counseling, where's um where's the other one?

She didn't want to come.

What are we doing here?

What what what what are we doing here?

Now one thing that I often find when the couples do come together, that's that's a win right there.

But one thing that I often find that hardly ever leads to a resolution is when one party is pointing the finger at the other.

He doesn't communicate.

He does this, she does that, and it never leads anywhere because no one has taken ownership of what they need to lay down and kill

You have something to lay.

You have something to lay.

And and listen, I say this with love.

If you don't know what it is that you have to lay, it's probably because you've been taking a look far too long at what they've got to lay.

There's a reason Jesus tells us to take the speck out of our own eye.

They might have a log in theirs.

You may just have a little bit of us uh of some dust.

Take take ownership of that

God tells Abraham, take your son.

He says, take your only son.

That's interesting because Abraham had two sons.

Notice that he says take your son your only son but Abraham had two sons he had one son from his maidservant Hagar

And then he has Isaac from his wife.

Why did God tell him take your only son?

Referring to Isaac?

Maybe it's because God knows that we often give him the least of what he's asked us to give.

And so when God said, give me your son, Abraham knew exactly what he was talking about.

Oh snap, this is the son of the promise.

This is the good one.

The son that we waited for and prayed for, the most precious gift ever given to me.

No shade to Ishmael, but God doesn't want your Ishmael, he wants your Isaac.

Why Isaac?

Isaac is perfect.

Isaac is good.

Isaac's got purpose.

Ishmael came from baby mama drama and adultery and scandal

God doesn't want just the worst of you.

He also wants the best of you.

And so maybe you are the good spouse.

Maybe you are in the right.

Maybe they do have some things that they need to fix, but God is looking at you to build your altar.

Last one.

Last one.

Altar.

Build your altar.

Somebody say that word with me.

So we've been talking about this thing that we need to build, this thing that we need to bring our own stuff to, but what what exactly is an altar?

There's a lot of meanings that we've assigned to it

Worship, praise, singing, uh, crying, humility.

Those aren't those aren't necessarily incorrect, but I don't want you to leave today with a vague, watered-down definition of what an altar is.

So I'm going to tell you exactly what it is.

An altar is a place where things die.

Mitzbeah is the Hebrew word, and it doesn't even mean sacrifice.

Sacrifice is a good one, but it it goes further than that, it means slaughter.

Abraham wasn't asked to say a prayer for his son.

He wasn't asking, he wasn't being asked to dedicate his son to the Lord's service.

He was asking him to slaughter something that was so precious to him.

Now, God won't always ask you to slaughter what's precious to you.

Sometimes He's gonna ask you to slaughter what's evil, but has become so stuck to you that it's almost a part of you.

You don't want to let it go.

This is another reason why I say coming to the altar doesn't really cost you that much.

How many question, question real quick?

How many can honestly say that you can come to the altar when you are really angry?

Like when you are enraged.

Like I I mean like when your blood's boiling.

Y'all know that feeling.

How many of you can really come to the altar in that moment?

Let's be real.

If you're that angry, you're probably not even here right now.

Or or if you're deeply distressed or saddened, you probably take a Sunday off.

And and so you you might know that you have some anger issues to work through.

It's part of your identity, it's it's not who you are, but it's a part of who you are, and you're tired of dealing with all this anger stuff.

And so you come to the altar.

Listen, you come to the altar, and what do you tell God?

Lord, take my anger.

But you're not Lord, take this lust from me.

I don't want to struggle with it anymore.

I don't want to deal with pornography anymore.

You're likely not being tempted in the moment.

When you're praying that, you are level-headed, you are in a sound mind, you're not being tempted.

You can't kill what you don't bring with you.

This side got it.

You can't kill what you don't bring with you.

You can't do it

So when you're telling God to take your anger, but you're not even angry, he ain't taking nothing from you.

All you're doing is committing to give it to him.

But then tomorrow or next Sunday when someone

Makes you upset in the parking lot.

You forgot about that prayer.

You can't kill what you didn't bring with you.

That's why coming to the altars is easy, but building it

is difficult.

See, I can I can say um I can say that I fear the Lord.

I can sing about my love for the Lord.

I can worship when it's easy.

But when God is asking me to kill the thing that is in me and with me in the moment, that's when building the altar will cost me

The most.

It's in the moment of lustful temptation that it needs to be surrendered to God.

That might be very difficult, but that's when it that's when it's gonna cost you something.

It's when the emotions are overtaking you that you need to say Holy Spirit take over.

I can only kill something when I have it with me to kill.

I know people who've got pride problems.

I know people who got anger problems.

But they don't have anger problems when they're at church.

I know you've got some marital issues at home.

You're always fighting at home, but but you you look like the couple of the year when you're at church.

You can't kill what you haven't brought to be slaughtered.

And this is what we mean when we say give it to God.

How many have been told that before?

Give it to God.

Doesn't it sound like a cop out?

When I when I say Pastor David, he's very good about saying give it to God.

If you've ever had a counseling session with David, he's gonna tell you, hey brother, just give it to God.

Say on the David.

But but I want you to understand what that really means.

He's not just telling you to say a little prayer.

Okay, Lord, have

It here you here you go.

It's not just a gesture, it's not something that you just pray, it's something that you do.

You have to lay it at the altar that you've built and that you've cried at and that you've worshipped on, and then you got to kill it.

Now, in a second, I want to invite you to come to the altar.

But but I I I only want you to come if you have something to bring, okay?

Please don't defile the altar.

Take it seriously.

How many times do we come to the altar with nothing to bring?

If you were to do that in the Old Testament, you'd you'd get smoked.

Now now if you want to come and you want to pray and you want to worship at the altar, that's that's fine.

But like when you're responding to the word, bring bring bring something with you.

Bring something with you.

But first I want to read Verse 7.

I'm still with you, right?

Okay.

Verse 7, real quick, stay with me.

Isaac um

Isaac tells Abraham, My father, he said, Here I am, son.

He said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.

Okay, remember I told you to hold on to those two words, Abraham, um obedience and faith.

See, we can we can recognize Abraham as a as being a man of obedience.

But what he was really known for is being a man of faith.

He went into the to the hall of fame of faith.

Listen, it's hard to be obedient.

Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen.

It's hard to be obedient when you have little faith.

If I'm going to follow Jesus, I have to believe that he's going to lead me into the right places.

If God is going to call me into the wilderness, I've I've got to have the faith to know that God is going to meet me there before I step foot in the forest.

You know when Jesus called Peter to step out of the boat

And onto the waters towards him.

It wasn't Peter's obedience that was called in to question, it was his faith.

When when Peter's faith, listen, listen, man, I want you to get this.

God revealed man God showed me this and it was just- it blew my mind.

When Peter's faith began to waver as he was walking on the water, when his faith began to weaken, it became a hindrance to his ability to obey.

So I wonder, and maybe this isn't for everybody, but this is for some of you.

I wonder if Christians who haven't laid everything at the altar

Having done so, not because of disobedience.

I know we're so quick to point fingers, back to faith that God is going to provide something better.

It's fear over faith.

It's backwards.

It's backwards.

We're called to live faith over fear.

Faith is the opposite of fear.

And so when we don't submit to the things that we know we have to submit, oftentimes it's not a spirit of rebellion, it's a lack of faith.

I think the perfect example of this is the tithe.

Stay with me.

We're talking about tithing.

God told Israel to bring a tenth of the harvest.

Bring a tenth of what you reap.

How many of us don't tithe?

Not because we want to be disobedient, we want to be obedient.

But we don't tithe because of fear of giving up a tenth of our income.

We fear that I want to give.

I want to be able to trust you.

We don't do it.

Because we fear.

I believe Abraham was this man who was holding on to this promise.

This man who spoke

To God and received a word of abundance.

I believe that he really thought that somehow, some way, God was going to provide for him.

He didn't doubt it

So when Isaac asks him, look, I see everything that's needed for the burnt offering, but where's the offering?

Abraham says, the Lord will provide.

Abraham could only be so obedient because he know he knew the good and faithful God would provide for him.

And so when the

When he gets to the final hour and and Isaac is on the altar and he's bound and and and he's about to uh about to sacrifice him to the Lord, he draws his knife.

And what does the angel say?

Now I know you fear me.

Now I know that you fear me.

What you fear isn't losing what you have.

What you fear isn't your own flesh and blood.

You don't fear losing what's so important to you.

And what's become a part of your identity, God says, you fear me.

How many of us can truly say that we can lay everything down at the feet of Jesus because we fear him and only him?

But can I tell you, church, that God will always provide something better?

Whether whether what you're laying down is pure or what you're laying down is is filthy, but it needs to come off of you.

God, God will always one up what you lay down.

Always.

I want you to stand with me.

Look, I don't want you to remember this word for listen listen listen listen listen I want you to remember this word as people of God

When you get a text message that you don't like and it takes your joy, when you get some news

That that would make any normal person surrender the joy.

You're not a normal person

You're a child of God, man.

You know how to build altars.

You know how to bring your mess

You know how to kill what needs to be killed because you have the faith that whatever you lay down on the altar, God will provide something better.

That's who you are.

And that's what you got to tell yourself, man.

God's way is better.

God's way is better.

If you're gonna be baptized, I'm gonna go ahead and dismiss you.

But I want to do this altar call real quick.

With every head bowed and every eye closed, Holy Spirit, lead this moment, my Lord.

Jesus.

If you have something to kill today

Like you're you you got it with you.

You got it with you.

You came to church with it.

You gotta lay it down

You gotta lay it down.

You need to confess it to one of these prayer partners.

If that's you this morning

If it's you and a spouse that are going through some things and you need to confess some things, I want you to come forward this morning and let God meet you here at this altar.

But only come if you've got something with you.

Don't devalue this moment.

Come on, these altars are open.

If that's you, if that's you, I want you to come forward.

I want you to confess it, and I want you to lay it, and I want you to kill it

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church, visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.

org.

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Thanks again and God bless.